A livestream complaint ended Yan Xuejing's decade-old endorsements overnight

In late 2025, Yan Xuejing — a veteran actress best known for her role as Shan Xing in rural TV dramas, with decades of goodwill among middle-aged audiences — told her livestream that her son's family 'earns only a few hundred thousand a year and can't make ends meet'. The remark was read as rich people's fake poverty; her 178-square-metre Beijing home and a 12,000-yuan-per-60-second ad rate circulated as receipts. By 10 January 2026 her Douyin and Kuaishou accounts had been barred from being followed, and consumers began vowing to boycott the products she endorsed.

On 11 January, Liaoning Dihua MSG Food, maker of the condiment brand Zuoxiangyuan, published a statement: 'after careful assessment, effective 11 January, we formally terminate the endorsement cooperation with Ms Yan Xuejing on the Zuoxiangyuan brand and related products'. Sohu's follow-up report described the factory warehouse full of sauce and doubanjiang jars printed with her face — now scrap; new packaging design, moulds and store reshelving would take at least three months, while the brand's livestream rooms saw sales plunge as angry viewers arrived.

Tongchu, a Tianjin condiment brand that had worked with Yan for ten years, also cut ties the same week: production line stopped, packaging redesigned, and the company said it would sue her for the losses — packaging write-offs, production stoppage and reputation damage. Its owner told reporters he would 'never hire a celebrity spokesperson again'. Industry estimates put her total termination liability in the tens of millions.

Two brands terminated decade-long deals, halted production and scrapped packaging; her termination liability was estimated in the tens of millions.

Ten years of consumer trust sat on one face — a single off-script remark in one livestream undid what a decade of packaging had built

The product was the endorsement: condiments sold on familiarity, so when the face became a reason to boycott, the jars themselves became unsellable inventory

No exit ladder: a small regional brand cannot absorb redesign, retooling and reshelving costs, and the penalty clauses made the celebrity exit nearly as expensive as the boycott

When the product's shelf appeal is the endorser's face, one sentence can turn the warehouse into scrap — the packaging is the contract.

Zuoxiangyuan pulled her image from product pages and said new packaging would reach stores in about three months. Tongchu halted its whole line, redesigned the packaging and began legal proceedings against Yan for packaging losses, stoppage costs and reputation damage. Her accounts remained restricted and her TV dramas were quietly delisted from platforms; both brands kept their distance and made no further announcements.